Just weeks after receiving sour marks from Utah’s Office of the Legislative Auditor General, the Park City School District has received a grade from the College Board it can be proud to show its mom.
In the first year of the College Board’s Advanced Placement honor roll, Park City High School has achieved the highest categorical rankings.
An October letter sent to Principal Roger Arbabi from Trevor Packer, the senior vice president of AP and instruction, notified the school it “has earned a place on the College Board’s AP School Honor Roll for the 2022-23 school year!”
“Your school is being further recognized with the AP Access Award, which honors schools that encourage more low-income and underrepresented minority students to take AP courses,” Pack wrote. “The percentage of students in at least one of these categories who took at least one AP Exam before graduation is proportional to or above your school’s student population, demonstrating a clear and effective commitment to equitable access to advanced coursework.”
Attached to the letter is an official honor roll certificate, as well as the criteria the high school met in order to be granted its recognition.
According to the data, 84% of the school’s 404-member class of 2023 had taken at least one AP course; 76% scored at least a 3 on at least one AP test, thus qualifying for college credits; and 35% took at least five AP exams during their high school career, with at least one of those tests being administered in their freshman or sophomore year.
Given these statistics — each more than double the necessary marks for a school to receive honor roll status — Park City High School is considered a platinum school, the highest of four possible honor roll categories.
Arbabi couldn’t contain his excitement with the recognition.
“This is a huge deal for us because we’ve been working so hard to do so well with our AP scores,” he said. “We feel like it’s a great indicator of how well we’re doing as a school.”
He said the school has done a lot to make AP courses more accessible to students who might otherwise shy away or not get an opportunity to engage in the more difficult classes.
“We’ve removed barriers for the kiddos to take the class,” he said. “There’s no prerequisites to any of these classes. A student can sign up for any AP class that they want. … I think that removing all of those barriers and just having phenomenal teachers in place to make sure that the curriculum is taught and making sure that they can get all the work done is really huge.”
While he said an influx of students taking AP tests would generally lead one to predict a drop in overall average scores, the high school has actually seen a consistent pass rate of 76% over the past five years.
Last year alone, he said, around 1,800 AP tests were administered to 600-700 students out of a total of 1,200 students at the high school.
The importance of encouraging students to take these difficult classes, he said, is not only the possibility of earning college credits, but also engaging in course material that will better prepare them for college.
He also explained how the classes are made more accessible and approachable through the school’s Dream Big program, which promotes students whose parents did not graduate from college to continue pursuing their education beyond the caps and gowns of high school graduation.
“We have a program where we bring these kids in in the summertime. They actually meet their AP teachers. They go through the first unit over the course of the summer,” Arbabi said. “When these kids that are from underrepresented groups go into that class the first day, they’ve already met the teacher, they’re familiar with the content, they’re familiar with the academic vocabulary that’s happening in that class, and so they feel like they belong.”
Arbabi said that in November, the College Board is planning to release more data showing where schools rank among others. For now, he said he is proud of the individuals who work hard to make the high school successful.
“Kudos to my teachers and kudos to my students from last year that are just doing amazing things,” he said.